Sen. John McCain turned in a strong performance, Rudy Giuliani held his own and Mitt Romney lost ground, according to New Hampshire voters who watched the debate among eight Republican presidential candidates at the University of New Hampshire.
But voters here seemed no closer on Thursday to settling on a GOP candidate. Some Republican voters are even examining the Democratic field for a candidate with more firepower.
“I like Hillary, quite frankly,” said Durham resident Joseph G. Smath, 83, who describes himself as a Republican but is registered as an independent. “Have I made up my mind? No.”
With former GOP Sen. Fred Thompson joining the field, the Republican race has become even more scrambled.
“Thompson is interesting,” said Ron Paul, 60, a Madbury marketing manager. “He is going to add another dimension to the race, but he’s got to make some distinction between himself and the rest of them.”
Thompson announced his candidacy Wednesday night on the “Tonight Show” with Jay Leno shortly after the conclusion of the debate, which was aired by Fox News and moderated by Brit Hume. The candidates took shots at Thompson, but the newcomer appeared to win the publicity game by reaching Leno’s large audience and by airing campaign ads during the debate.
The most substantive exchanges in the debate were about Iraq, which played to McCain’s strength as a Vietnam war hero and an expert on national defense.
He scolded Romney for saying the troop surge that began earlier this year was “apparently” working.
“No, not ‘apparently,’ it’s working,” McCain responded.
McCain’s confident performance rekindled memories of his 2000 presidential bid, when he was for a time the leading candidate. Now struggling in his 2008 campaign, political analysts detected signs of a comeback.
“I don’t think it will propel him to the top,” said University of New Hampshire political science professor Dante Scala, “but after a long summer of bad news, it’s something for him to build on.”
Bob Sprague, 54, isn’t getting on the McCain bandwagon. The retail manager and longtime Bush backer from North Berwick, Maine, said he likes Giuliani, adding that “Romney hasn’t shown me anything yet.”
In fact, the most appealing candidate to Sprague so far is Democrat Bill Richardson of New Mexico.
“Richardson’s got a decent plan on immigration,” Sprague said.
Romney,the front-runner in New Hampshire, drew some of the toughest questions. When a Fox correspondent interviewed people watching the debate in a local restaurant, the father of a soldier in Iraq said he was angered when Romney tried to equate the campaign work of his own five sons to the service of those fighting the war.
“He got dinged up,” Scala said of Romney. “I think it’s a preview of what’s coming.”
